


still bright

by vaguelyremarkable



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Depression, F/F, Romance, happy ending i promise!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 14:49:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11465838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyremarkable/pseuds/vaguelyremarkable
Summary: she loved her too much, as if she was the very air she needed to breathe, and it broke her. (the inquisitor struggles with her relationships with sera and cassandra).





	still bright

It is not delicate or graceful, when she falls for the Seeker.

Her fall is desperate and excruciating and exhilarating in the most dangerous of ways. There is caution in Varric’s eyes and he raises his hand to stop her, but the Inquisitor is reckless and driven and she plunges forward, straight through his warning.

Cassandra catches her on the balcony and speaks to her quietly, regretfully, her head bowed. The word “friend” is deliberate and it rings in the air as the Seeker turns away and returns to her post in Skyhold.

The Inquisitor fell too hard and too fast and she can feel her bones break when she hits the bottom.

She does not allow herself to heal, there is no time for that. It is easier on missions, to forget her bruises, so she is on the move, constantly, Dorian and Vivienne often accompanying her. She takes Cassandra when she can bear it and Iron Bull when she cannot.

The Inquisitor will survive because she must. She pushes onward.

* * *

 

It is a mistake, the night she spends with Sera, because that night turns into months that stretch on and on and taste bitter, bitter, bitter.

Leliana grabs the Inquisitor’s arm after leaving the war room one night. They go to the Inquisitor's quarters and stand on the balcony. The air chills them and turns their words to jagged ice that cuts deep, as the Inquisitor argues and Leliana pleads for her to come to her senses. Below, Cassandra strides across the courtyard and above, the Inquisitor mirrors her pacing.

The Inquisitor stops suddenly, her eyes smoldering as Leliana touches her shoulder with gentle fingers.

“You will only hurt yourself and Sera, if you cannot give her the love she deserves,” she says.

The Inquisitor clenches the balcony, knuckles white, hopeless eyes watching the seeker.

“Please,” Leliana breathes, “Do not continue this.”

The Inquisitor closes her eyes.

She makes her choice.

* * *

 

The candles burn so faintly that she can barely see the paper but the Inquisitor continues to write, late into the night. She has memorized the proper words to tell the family of an Inquisition soldier that their child has given their life in service to a greater cause.

“Inquisitor.”

“Yes?”

The Inquisitor does not take her eyes off her work to meet Cassandra’s gaze.

“It is late,” Cassandra says quietly, “You have worked enough.”

“Not yet,” the Inquisitor responds, her hand a blur over the pages. Cassandra hesitates, then reaches out to still the Inquisitor’s hand.

“Enough,” she repeats, “You must rest.”

The Inquisitor glances up, her eyes sharp and piercing and glistening with tears she cannot shed for soldiers she has never met. Cassandra’s touch still burns her skin, but she no longer feels her heart bleed in her chest.

Cassandra’s eyes are full of soft-edged concern and it is only when the Inquisitor looks closely that she sees the dark circles painted by exhaustion under the warrior’s eyes. The Inquisitor studies Cassandra and sketches invisible lines with her eyes from the loose strands of Cassandra’s braid to the sharp line of her chin to the tense muscles of her arms.

Their eyes meet and the Inquisitor exhales as if a weight had been removed from her thin shoulders.

“I will leave you to rest,” Cassandra murmurs and slips away.

The Inquisitor stares after her, her eyes unfocused, long after she is gone. The world has shifted beneath her feet and she is standing on a new precipice, choosing a new path.

“Enough,” the Inquisitor whispers to herself.

_Enough._

* * *

 

There are still battles after Corypheus. There is still an Inquisition that stands for peace and justice and there is still an Inquisitor.

The Inquisitor’s laughter, once a rarity, can be heard echoing around Skyhold faintly. She looks Cassandra in the eye and holds it. Her bones are mending themselves slowly, but surely and she is determinedly threading her torn heart back together.

She and Sera spend their days causing trouble and being trouble. It’s not love yet, but it could be.

Leliana tries to hide her overwhelming relief as she watches from the balcony. She believed it impossible, but the Inquisitor has always been full of impossibilities. Cassandra joins her, occasionally.

“I have hope for them,” the Seeker says, one day, her dark eyes lit with relief as well at the Inquisitor’s renewed spirits.

“We all do,” Leliana replies.

“Cassandra! Leliana!”

“Oh maker help us,” the Seeker mutters under her breath as the Inquisitor and Sera wave from under the balcony. Leliana chuckles.

“Yes, Inquisitor?” she calls back.

“No matter what Cullen’s arse says, we didn’t do it!” Sera shouts, laughing.

“Cullen’s... arse?” Cassandra says confusedly moments before the arse in question comes running onto the balcony.

“Inquisitor! SERA!”

“Run!” Sera whispers to the Inquisitor and the two of them are gone, grinning at each other with sunlight smiles. A hint of a smile crosses Leliana’s face as she watches.

It’s not love between them, not yet, but it could be.

* * *

 

The Inquisitor takes Cassandra, Vivienne, and Sera to seal one of the last rifts in the Hinterlands, a small team of Inquisition scouts with them. They move with fluid, practiced ease. They have challenged and beaten much greater enemies than this.

They are careless. 

The Inquisitor does not see the rage demon until it is behind Cassandra. She shouts and Cassandra turns, but too late.

Cassandra gasps and crumples to the ground and the Inquisitor cannot breathe.

There is no silence, no pause, no interlude in the battle. It rages on, blood seeping into the floor and screams of terrified farmers echoing.

The Inquisitor reaches Cassandra’s body as Vivienne and Sera slay the last of the demons. She raises her hand numbly, green light crackling on her palm, and seals the rift, eyes never leaving the Seeker’s unmoving chest.

It is so _loud._

She can hear every breath, every cry of the wounded, every thudding footstep. The Inquisitor is on her knees, bloody hand gripping Cassandra’s lifeless one, as scouts begin to gather around her. She touches Cassandra’s cheek with her other thumb, lightly, gently, delicately.

She forgets how to live.

As Sera shouts for a healer and Vivienne pushes her way through the crowd, the Inquisitor unclasps her hand and turns away from the dark body. She is gone before either of her companions reach her.

* * *

 

They lie Cassandra to rest in a grand, flourishing ceremony, amongst nobles carefully doling out their grief and the broken-hearted Inquisition. She would’ve hated it, the Inquisitor thinks.

The Inquisitor stands solemn and stiff-faced through the memorial as members of the Inquisition weep around her.

Three days after, she asks Cole again what he sees in her. He wants to help. He tells the truth.

“Still bright,” he tells her.

Still bright, but getting darker. Still bright, but getting harsher, colder, angrier. These are the words he doesn’t say.

Her fierce eyes make him shrink back, before they soften and the Inquisitor gives Cole a tired, broken smile. She does not press him for more.

Cole fades away and the Inquisitor forgets.

* * *

 

_“She’s gone mad....”_

The advisors try their best to keep the rumors out of the Inquisitor’s earshot, but she hears them eventually, as they trickle through the halls of Skyhold. When she walks by, voices drop to a whisper and people hurry to clear her path. None meet her eyes. She stays in her quarters more and more frequently, alone and grieving.

No one knows what to do with the leader who will never be fit to lead again.

The advisors maintain the running of the castle and the organization now, each sharing a piece of the Inquisitor’s burden.

Cullen is far quieter now, but he leaps to the Inquisitor’s defense when necessary fiercer than any of the others. Recruits learn quickly to keep their mouths clean of gossip when he is near.

Leliana watches from the shadows. She does her best to heal the scars on the outside, but she is helpless against the Inquisitor’s internal bleeding.

Josephine asks the Inquisitor if she needs anything every day. The answer is always no, polite and firm, but it has become a ritual now between them, and they both cling to it for survival.

The Inquisition continues without an Inquisitor.

* * *

 

Sera leaves her, about a month after the funeral. It was inevitable, and they all knew it.

The Inquisitor’s love for Cassandra, so hidden when she was alive, is thrown into the open after her death through unkind gossip. Sordid rumors swirl around that barely puncture the Inquisitor’s mourning, but reach Sera easily. She covers her shock and hurt with rage at being used and Leliana’s hasty attempt to reveal the depth of the Inquisitor's love for Sera falls on deaf ears.

Sera spits out frustration and rage and betrayal and the Inquisitor barely lifts her head to acknowledge it. Words like second best and get over yourself fall like broken glass onto the floor and they stay there, even after Sera slams the door and leaves the Inquisitor seated, head bowed, unmoving.

It is Varric who is the first to check up on her. He opens the door to the Inquisitor’s quarters quietly and is unsurprised to see a ransacked mess within. He cleans up the shards of the bottle that the Inquisitor threw after Sera left and does the best he can with the stain on the wall. He finds her slumped against her bed, her hands clenched into fists, her head bobbing forward listlessly.

Neither of them speak.

Varric stays there for the night, watching over her. She sleeps erratically and wakes, terrified, in the night but he is there to soothe her back to sleep. Vivienne will be here tomorrow night and Iron Bull the night after that and Blackwall the night after that. They are trying, all of them, to make a dead heart beat again but they are failing.

Varric bows his head and for the first time since leaving Kirkwall, he prays.

* * *

 

It is the morning after Sera leaves that Vivienne enters the Inquisitor’s quarters.

Vivienne coaxes the Inquisitor to speak and they talk about polite nothings on the sunlit balcony until their wells of memorized phrases go dry.

“Darling,” Vivienne says cautiously, after a silence, “You know that I more than any other know how you are feeling.”

The Inquisitor nods her head, just barely.

“I know that it is truly hell, my dear,” Vivienne says quietly, “But remember that you have many friends beside you. We are here for you, Inquisitor.”

Who is the Inquisitor?

She is trying to remember. She sees Vivienne’s kind eyes, wyvern hearts and broken swords, golden armor and old gods. She sees silver-plated warriors and silver-masked empresses and dances and poetry and candles. She catches a glimpse of the Inquisitor, laughing with a girl with hair like the sun and eyes like the sky.

_Sera?_

But she cannot remember anymore without hurting and she weeps.

* * *

 

Josephine pours the tea slowly, her elegant fingers hesitating. Sera has been gone for three weeks now without a single letter or note.

“Please,” she says and pushes a cup to the Inquisitor, “Drink.”

The Inquisitor sips haltingly, but her eyes are clearer than they have been in weeks. She has been taking long walks around Skyhold, Blackwall accompanying her silently. She sits in the tavern sometimes, on good days, with the Chargers and Iron Bull, listening to their stories. But mostly, she writes.

She writes when she wakes and she writes before falling asleep. She spends her days muttering to herself, crossing things out and adding new sentences. Some days, she writes feverishly and some days, the pencil shakes in her hand and all she can do is stare at the page, but she is writing.

And as she writes, she heals.

No one knows what the Inquisitor is writing, but Josephine has her suspicions. There is a cautious atmosphere of hope beginning to spread amongst the Inquisition as the Inquisitor emerges from her isolation, slowly but surely.

As Josephine is leaving, the Inquisitor stands.

“Josephine,” she murmurs, her voice crackling like the quiet start of a blazing fire. The Inquisitor holds a letter out to her, a letter that bears a simple seal on the front and a single name on the back.

“Please take this to her,” she says, a storm of determination and hope brewing in her eyes. As Josephine takes the letter, a smile curves across her face and she nods.

When she slips the letter to Leliana only moments later, a spark begins to grow in the rogue’s eyes. It takes them days of connections and letters and searching, but they find her.

They send the letter with anxious hearts and they wait.

* * *

 

Dorian, back from Tevinter at Josephine’s request on behalf of the Inquisitor, is the first one to see Sera when she returns. His joy at seeing her is tempered after the embraces and the catching-ups and quietly, he tells her about the state of the Inquisitor. It is Vivienne who comes upon them next and the unadulterated relief and joy on her face when she sees Sera surprises them all.

“I am very glad to see you, my dear,” she says. “You are precisely who she needs.”

The two mages see that Sera’s wounds are healing but there is still anger and pain that lies beneath. The two of them, Sera and the Inquisitor, talk for hours. Dorian paces outside the Inquisitor's quarters and Vivienne writes letters. Varric comes quickly, Blackwall behind him, and Iron Bull, away with the Chargers, sends his best wishes.

“You never told me about her, about... how you felt about her,” Sera says quietly. “I left because I was angry because we were good before and we weren’t good after and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what I was to you. I... know I should’ve stayed. I’m sorry I left. I’m no good at talking but it’s a no-good excuse, that.”

Sera says everything they didn’t say and should’ve said and the Inquisitor listens and nods and apologizes herself, not once taking her eyes off of Sera.

“It’ll be a while,” Sera tells her. “For us, I mean. Not sure how long, really. We need time, I think. And bees. And maybe pranks.”

“Sera,” the Inquisitor says hoarsely as the rogue is leaving. “I’m so sorry for...”

For using you, for how I treated you, for everything. You are more, so much more than that, you deserve more, you deserve better. It was not a mistake, you are not a mistake.

I love you.

It’s on the tip of the Inquisitor’s tongue.

Sera hesitates at the door.

“I know,” she says, after a moment. “Keep in touch, right? Send more letters. Or don’t. I want... Just... I’ll be around so let’s see each other sometime, yeah?”

Sera opens the door and sees Vivienne, Dorian, Varric and Blackwall trying extremely hard to pretend as if they weren’t conspicuously waiting for her. She stares at them all for a moment, then shrugs.

“Should’ve brought my bees to prank you lot.”

The archer disappears down the hallway. Scarcely a moment after, the door to the Inquisitor’s room opens. The Inquisitor is standing there, her eyes lit with a fire that once commanded armies.

“I’d like,” she says to her companion’s stunned faces. “To see my advisors.”

* * *

 

The Inquisitor stands in the war room, weeks after Sera’s return. The wheels of the Inquisition that had been barely turning in the Inquisitor’s absence are now spinning rapidly as the Inquisitor steers the organization back onto the path of a driving force for good. The Inquisitor’s companions drift away to their duties, but never straying too far.

The Inquisitor’s thanks for their loyalty is heartfelt and subtle. She writes weekly letters to Dorian, in Tevinter, Varric, back in Kirkwall helping with the rebuilding efforts, and Blackwall, traveling with the Wardens. She takes tea with Vivienne and Josephine three days a week, spars with Bull and the Chargers at least twice a week and never misses a chess game with Cullen.

Sera hangs around and stays around. Sometimes, the Inquisitor and Sera vanish for hours on mysterious adventures and return, beaming. They talk and they travel and they have sex and they talk some more and when the Inquisitor tells Sera she loves her, it crosses her lips so easily, as if she has said it a thousand times before.

Then Sera says it back and the world feels bright again.

* * *

 

A month later, Leliana stands by the Inquisitor’s side, over a polished white tomb with simple engravings.

“It suits her,” Leliana says, brushing her fingers against the side of the tomb lightly. The Inquisitor agrees with a nod. They each clutch a bouquet of wildflowers, chosen with care and precision, as Cassandra would have liked, which they lay down together, on top of the tomb.

“I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade,” Leliana murmurs, “for there is no darkness, nor death either, in the Maker's Light, and nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.”

The soft breeze tousles their hair as they stand in silence over the tomb, the Inquisitor’s lips parted as she listens to the morning song of the awakening birds. Leliana’s eyes are closed as she rests her hand on the tomb, her lips moving soundlessly. The Inquisitor exhales and places a tentative hand next to Leliana’s on the tomb, for a brief moment before she withdraws it.

“Rest well, Cass,” the Inquisitor whispers as Leliana finishes her prayer.

It has been so long since she has been at peace, the Inquisitor thinks she almost doesn’t recognize the feeling. She clasps Leliana’s shoulder briefly.

Then the Inquisitor turns away from the tomb and with light, quick steps, heads down the hills to where Sera, and a new chapter of life, is waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy. ohh boy. sooo, i started this piece about a year and a half ago which is pretty ridiculous, even for my slow writing pace. i'm still not entirely happy with it, but i figured it's about time i posted it. please do leave me your comments below, i would love to know what you think!! thank you, as always, for taking the time to read this and if you're interested in finding me elsewhere, you can find me on tumblr @talktothemabari.


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